Zoos & Aquariums
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1993:
The Zoological Society of London on April 13
rejected plans by entrepreneur David Laing and New Zoo
Developments Ltd. to build a $55 million walk-through
aquarium and wildlife film theatre on the 36-acre site. The
166-year-old London Zoo, the world’s oldest, has raised
$3.8 million independently, toward the cost of $32.5 mil-
lion worth of renovations it needs to become a captive
breeding facility. Laing said he would try to situate the pro-
posed aquarium and theatre elsewhere in London.
The Pittsburgh Zoo opened an insect gallery on
April 24, featuring a $24,000 video camera that allows visi-
tors to zoom in on particular insects, magnify their view,
and follow them around a terrarium. Nineteen insect species
are featured in the gallery, and are rotated in the magnifica-
tion area.
The Houston Zoo in mid-May opened Small
Mammal World, featuring 165 animals of 37 species in
replica desert, rain forest, and mountaintop habitats, plus a
Texas Wetland Exhibit, which is a renovated alligator
exhibit and––protected from the alligators by a fence––a
number of other native species including turtles, ducks,
gars, and egrets.
The Fossil Rim Wildlife Center at Glen Rose,
Texas, announced May 20 that it has managed to hatch
endangered Attwater’s prairie chickens––the first time the
species has been bred successfully in captivity. Adverse
weather has cut the wild population from 1,100 individuals
to fewer than 450 over the past five years.
The Parc Safari Zoo in Hemmingford, Quebec,
was quarantined May 11, just 11 days before it was to
open to the public for the summer, after two Cape elands
were found to have died of tuberculosis back in February.
Any other infected animals were to be slaughtered, except
for endangered species, which would be placed in perma-
nent quarantine.
Last year the Philadelphia Zoo began turning a
buck on the side by selling animal manure to a company that
marketed it as Zoo Doo. The Paignton Zoo in southeastern
England has upped the ante, selling resin-coated, cannon-
ball-sized elephant turds at $9.25 apiece. First offered on
Easter weekend, they reportedly went “like hot cakes.”
